


Maybe This Time

by lilyhandmaiden



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: 5+1 Things, Childhood, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Loss of Parent(s), Teen Years
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22093138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyhandmaiden/pseuds/lilyhandmaiden
Summary: Stevie has lived in Schitt's Creek her whole life, and she's seen a lot of people come and go from behind the motel desk.These are five times Stevie Budd almost left Schitt's Creek, and one time she really needed to be back there.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16





	1. Dad, The Road, 1994

**Dad, The Road, 1994**

Stevie was hiding under the couch in the office of the motel, pretending to work on the mountain of homework that had been dropped off for her last week, but really watching her dad man the front desk for Aunt Maureen. He was doing a crossword, rhythmically tapping the desk with his pencil, and looking bored. She was pretty sure she’d been lying under the couch so quietly and for so long that he’d forgotten she was there.

It had been a month since her mother’s funeral. Since then, everyone in Schitt’s Creek gave her this pitying look whenever they saw her: oh, there goes Stevie-with-the-dead-mom. She hated it. So she hadn’t gone back to school, and she didn’t go on errands with Nana Budd, where people she knew would see her. But she also hated helping Grandpa and Aunt Maureen around the motel, because when guests checked in who _didn’t_ know her, and what had happened, and that the whole world sucked now, they looked at her all aggressively cheerful and said, “Why don’t you smile, sweetie?”

So she hid a lot, from everyone and everything. Except her dad. She followed him everywhere—to work at the motel, through town, and home again. When he went out to the bar at night, she waited at her bedroom window, barely breathing, for him to come back.

The phone at the front desk rang, and Dad answered it, “Schitt’s Creek Motel,” like he was supposed to, with a heavy sigh like he wasn’t supposed to. But he perked up immediately and said, “Oh, hey, man! How’s the road?” Stevie knew that meant it was Mr. Sands calling from the Fleetwood Mac tour. He and Dad had been roadies for the band since before she was born—hence her name, in honor of its former lead singer—and used to be gone more often than not on national and sometimes even international tours.

Stevie could barely remember when she and her mom used to join Dad for nearby legs. When she was about three, someone had tripped over her backstage and almost dropped a speaker on her head; after that, they had visited her dad on the road less frequently, and when her parents broke up a couple years later, they’d stopped visiting him at all. Stevie could remember him coming home in between tours, and how she’d curled up on her bed and cried every time he left. But the Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks tours had dried up over two years ago. Until now. Under the couch, Stevie stuck her pencil in her mouth and chewed it, leaving little teeth marks.

“Oh, yeah, I bet... Yeah... Right... Well, you can tell Rhonda I said hello.” Dad laughed into the phone. “Here? I don’t know. Depressing.” A pause while Mr. Sands talked. “I know. I’ve been thinking about that, actually... Yeah, like old times...” Stevie put the pencil down and bunched the sleeves of her mom’s favorite flannel shirt, which she wore all the time now even though it was too big for her, into her fists. She brought her arms in close, wrapping herself in the shirt, bracing. “The thing is... I just don’t think I can go on with it like before.” He winced. “Come on, don’t be mad... Of course we’ve had good times, I just... I’ve gotten some perspective, and, well... I just think Stevie needs me. Stevie needs me more than the band does.”

Stevie let out her breath in one long, long exhale. Her dad started arguing with Mr. Sands, but she wasn’t really listening anymore. After he slammed the phone down in exasperation and went outside for a smoke break, Stevie finally crawled out from under the couch, smiling for the first time in a month.

 _He’s staying_. _He’s staying for_ me.

She would have thought that, after that, she’d be able to sleep when her dad went out at night, since he wasn’t going to up and leave to join Mr. Sands and Fleetwood Mac without telling her. But as she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to banish the image of fiery car wrecks from her mind, she realized it apparently wasn’t that simple. When headlights shone through her bedroom window, accompanied by the sound of a motor running, she crawled out from under the covers and crouched by the sill to see her dad climb out of the mayor’s son’s truck. He’d gotten a ride home. That was good.

He was saying, “...so I thought, ‘If I’m going back out, I’m going with her.’”

The mayor’s son, Roland Schitt, stuck his head out the driver’s side. “So, when do you think you’re leaving?”

“Think I’ll join up in LA in a week or two.”

Suddenly, Stevie’s heart was racing. All she could think was, _But he_ said. _He_ just said _he was staying._ _He can’t go back on it_ already _._

“Wow, LA, huh?” After a brief pause, Mr. Schitt asked, “What about your kid?”

“What about her?”

“You think she’s, y’know, ready?”

“Yeah, I think so. She’s older now. She can handle it. Anyway, I gotta get out of here.”

“Can’t say I really relate to that, but...” Mr. Schitt chuckled. “Whatever makes you happy. Have a good night.”

Stevie leapt back into her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin, just in case her dad came in to check on her.

He didn’t—Stevie’s guess was that he didn’t make it past the couch. When the house was quiet again, she whispered, “Oh my gosh” into the darkness. He wasn’t staying because he was taking her _with him_. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.”

When she drifted off to sleep, she dreamed of crowded buses and stages, highways that stretched all the way to the horizon, big cities like she’d only ever seen in movies.

Stevie dedicated the next day to sorting her belongings into what she could take on the road and what would have to stay in Schitt’s Creek. She dumped out the contents of her backpack and shoved in stuff that would be good for LA—shorts, t-shirts, sunglasses, her walkman and tapes, her favorite Nancy Drew books, and her stuffed Koala, Gus. Then she dug out her overnight bag from the back of her closet and packed what she might need further on the tour— jeans and sweaters, a coat, a hat, a rain poncho. A flashlight. A nice dress. A photo of her mom. Scrabble.

When she ran out of ideas, she wandered out into the living room and sat down next to her dad, who was watching TV.

“Hey, Dad? What do you bring with you when you go out on the road?”

He glanced over her and smiled a little. “An open mind, baby girl.” Which wasn’t really an answer, but Stevie smiled back anyway like she totally understood.

She expected him to tell her about the tour then, but he didn’t. He didn’t bring it up the next day, either, or the next. The weather turned warmer, and she had to unpack some of her t-shirts so she could wear them.

On the fourth day after she’d heard her father talk about the tour with Mr. Sands and Mr. Schitt, Stevie was reading a book under her grandparents’ kitchen table when everybody burst in yelling. She had heard the yelling coming, but couldn’t make out words until her Nana came through the door from the back porch, saying, “—the most irresponsible thing you’ve ever done!” Stevie’s dad followed her, and her grandpa trailed behind. They all ate dinner together most nights since, even though Stevie’s dad was staying with her in her mom’s little house, he wasn’t much use when it came to cooking. Now Nana Budd took out a knife that looked disturbingly big to Stevie and started chopping potatoes, her back to her son. “I hope you don’t think we’re going to tell that little girl for you! _You’ll_ have to do that.”

“I know that! I’m going to!” Dad shouted back. “ _Jesus_.”

Grandpa leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets. “So once you’ve made your daughter clear out of her house, what are you going to do with it? Let it sit empty?”

“I was thinking you could put it on the market. Take care of all that.”

“Oh, did you?”

Stevie’s book slid out of her lap as she leaned forward, and when it thudded onto the linoleum floor, everyone’s heads whipped in her direction. Caught, she pushed out one of the dining chairs and got to her feet, her eyes cast down as she fiddled with the hem of her mother’s old shirt.

After a moment’s silence, her dad said, “Christ, Stevie, how long have you been there?”

“A while.” She hadn’t thought about what would happen to the house. She’d just assumed they’d come back to it when the tour was over. The thought of leaving it forever shook her.

Hesitantly, Nana asked, “Would you be okay with us selling your house, Stevie? Since your mom’s gone...”

And right then, Stevie couldn’t think of a logical reason they shouldn’t. Not if she was leaving town anyway. So she said, “Yeah. I guess that’s fine.”

“Really?” All the adults exchanged glances before Nana continued. “Okay... and don’t worry about where you’ll go, you can always stay with us as long as you need. Or maybe you’d like to move in with your Aunt Linda and Uncle Carl and Sean, so there’ll be someone there closer to your age.”

Stevie looked up. “What about Dad?” When her grandparents glared at her father, she thought, _They must not know. He must not have told them yet that we’re both leaving._

Then Dad said, “I’m gonna hit the road again, baby girl.”

“But I’m coming with you.” Why didn’t he just tell them?

“Stevie,” Grandpa said slowly, “you know you can’t do that. For one thing, you have to go back to school.”

Stevie tried to meet her dad’s eyes, but he wouldn’t look directly at her. She felt alarm start to creep up from her stomach to her chest, and a note of desperation entered her voice. “You’re taking me with you, right, Dad?”

“For another thing,” Grandpa continued, “on the road with a rock and roll band is no place for a little girl.”

“But I’m older now! And bigger. And I won’t be in the way. Dad, tell them!” He’d _said_ he wouldn’t leave her. He’s _said_ if he went back out, it would be with her. She’d _heard_ him. Why was he acting like he hadn’t said it?

“It’s not the band,” Dad muttered, still not looking at her. “It’s a Stevie Nicks solo tour. The Street Angel Tour. Sandy’s on the band’s tour now, but I told him...”

And then it clicked. “She needs you more.”

“Yeah. See, _she_ gets it!”

She nodded slowly. So the “Stevie” he’d been talking about on the phone hadn’t been his daughter. And every conversation since hadn’t been about taking her on the road, but about leaving her behind. “I didn’t know about the solo tour. That makes sense.” She tried to laugh. “I’m so stupid.” One tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, and then another, and another. She wiped them away furiously with her too-long sleeves. “I’m sorry.”

Her voice broke on “sorry,” and then she was sobbing. She threw her arms around her father’s waist and said, “Daddy—please—,” not knowing whether she meant “please take me with you” or “please stay.”

He didn’t say anything else. He just sighed deeply, like he did on the motel phone—the sigh that meant he’d rather be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.

He left three days later. Stevie watched him drive away from behind the motel curtains. If he saw her standing there, he didn’t give any sign.


	2. Aunt Maureen, Saskatchewan, 2000

**Aunt Maureen, Saskatchewan, 2000**

Stevie sat cross-legged on the floor of her great-aunt Maureen’s apartment, wrapping knickknacks in newspaper and packing them into boxes while a cat named Cinnamon nuzzled its way onto her lap. Aunt Maureen was a few steps away in the kitchen, wrapping and packing the dishes while a cat named Nutmeg watched her. The a third cat, Brian, had run off to hide under the bed as soon as Stevie arrived and had yet to re-emerge. Brian was a big, furry asshole who hated everyone except Aunt Maureen.

The two humans in the apartment had worked for most of the last two hours in silence, after the usual, “How’s school?” was answered with the usual, “Fine.” This was partly because they knew each other well enough not to need to talk. But it was also partly because Stevie knew that Aunt Maureen was stressed about getting the packing done before the big move, given that only her great-niece had shown up to help. Not the sister she hadn’t spoken to since 1995 or the step-son she’d helped raise, not the cousin who lived in Elm Glen or the sister-in-law who lived five minutes away. Just Stevie.

Finally, though, Stevie had to ask: “Why do you have so many figurines of geese?”

Aunt Maureen glanced over. “I guess I must have told someone at some point that I liked geese.”

“ _Do_ you?”

“They’re all right. They have teeth on their tongues.”

“ _What_?” Stevie wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

“Or it could be people keep giving me geese because geese and I share a tendency to honk really loud and trash people’s lawns.”

Stevie raised her hands in an exaggerated shrug. “Who’s to say?”

Aunt Maureen laughed. “I’m gonna miss you, pumpkin.”

There were a lot of things Stevie could have said to that, the main one being, _Why are you leaving, then?_ But she knew that was childish, so instead, she looked down, wrapped up another goose and, after a pause, asked the question that had been lodged in her brain ever since her great-aunt had announced her intention to retire early and leave Schitt’s Creek and everyone she knew behind: “What are you going to do in Saskatchewan, anyway?”

Maureen sighed. “Not much—isn’t that what retirement is all about? Go to the casino. Maybe work part-time at a spa or a shop that sells crystals and stuff. Read palms. Get a fresh start.” She gestured around the nearly-empty apartment. “I’ve clearly burned all my bridges here.”

“Not _all_ of them,” Stevie said. “I mean... _I’m_ still here.”

“I know. But...” Maureen sighed, and a little weight settled in Stevie’s chest. But she wasn’t enough; she knew that, even though Aunt Maureen didn’t outright say it. Why should she stay for one great-niece? What she said instead was, “But between the divorce and your grandpa dying—and now he’s gone, your grandmother and I are not exactly seeing eye to eye.” She retrieved a bottle of wine from under the sink and uncorked it. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

“I’ve noticed.” Nana Budd and Aunt Maureen had always had differing opinions about how to conduct one’s life and business, but Grandpa had acted as a buffer between them. Now he was gone, and Nana’s attempts to introduce ideas around the motel like, “Greet guests with a smile,” and, “No drinking at work,” were being met with boisterous resistance from Aunt Maureen on a daily basis.

“But your grandpa left me a little bit, so...” Maureen poured some of the wine into a Garfield the Cat mug and drank. “I can finally afford to get out.”

“Oh.” Stevie scratched Cinnamon behind the ears for a second, then said, “Well, you could always take me with you.” She said it like she was kidding—which she was, mostly.

Aunt Maureen crossed her arms and replied, “Oh, yeah? And what would _you_ do with yourself in Saskatchewan?” She said it like she was kidding, too—but Stevie couldn’t help but notice that that wasn’t strictly a _no_.

So she carefully set another goose—at least the tenth one—into the box in front of her. “Get a hot hockey player boyfriend? Learn to really love curling?”

“Dang,” Aunt Maureen responded. “Good answers.” Her expression was unreadable. “But what about school?”

“They have schools in Saskatchewan.”

“True. Probably better ones.”

“Exactly! Think of my _future_!” Stevie and Aunt Maureen studied each other from across the room, mouths turned up in identical smirks.

Maureen moved first. She took a drink of wine from her mug and turned back to her box of dishes. “Unfortunately, your grandpa didn’t leave me quite enough for a two-bedroom. So it looks like you’ll have to make do with a Schitt’s Creek High School education like all the rest of us.”

The weight in Stevie’s chest sank a little further. She knew she should let it go there, but she heard herself asking, “What if I paid you rent? I could get a job. I could work at… at a Tim Hortons or a Rose Video or—doesn’t Moose Jaw have a mall?” The absurdity of the image caught up with her, and Stevie found herself holding back a smile. “I could work at the _mall_ like someone in an ‘80’s sitcom.” Her tone conveyed all the amused disdain for malls she knew she would feel if the nearest mall wasn’t two hours away and visited only once a year on a Christmas shopping pilgrimage.

“Not a motel?” Aunt Maureen teased back.

“Not even a _hotel_.”

“Wouldn’t you miss your friends?”

“Uh, no.” Aunt Maureen raised an eyebrow, prompting Stevie to elaborate, so she did: “They suck.”

“I see.”

“Besides, I would rapidly replace them with my new _mall_ friends I’d hang out with at the _mall_.” She looked back down at the cat in her lap as she muttered, “Who I’d know weren’t just being nice to me because I could get them access to motel rooms.”

“Ah. I remember those days.” Aunt Maureen poured wine into a second mug, this one featuring Snoopy, and brought it over to Stevie. “Of course, back then, we usually didn’t have as many rooms available. Still.”

Stevie accepted the mug, took a small sip, and tried not to make a face. It was a cheap white wine that tasted like warm raisins. “I did start charging them after a while,” she admitted. She felt safe telling Aunt Maureen stuff like this because they both knew Maureen herself was kind of a mess and wouldn’t judge. “I mean, I had to wash a lot of extra sheets, so it seemed fair.”

“I thought your Nana had a very strict policy against rooms by the hour.” This was something Maureen had fought her on not long ago on the grounds that money was money.

“She does. But I didn’t go by the hour, I charged a flat fee.” Stevie tried another sip of the wine. “Also I didn’t tell her.”

“Sounds lucrative.”

“I bought a little TV for my bedroom.”

“And yet I notice you’re using the past tense, so where exactly did this foolproof scheme go wrong?”

Stevie winced. “You know how Jenny Johnston’s pregnant? Well, _she_ claims that happened in room 6, although _I_ maintain it could’ve been basically anywhere. They weren’t very selective. Or discreet. But anyway, her mom called Nana, and she grounded me and made me promise it would never happen again. And then everybody stopped hanging out with me, so...”

Aunt Maureen lowered herself to sit beside Stevie, groaning as her knees complained, and put her arm around her great-niece. “High school is tough, pumpkin.”

Stevie leaned in to her, prompting Cinnamon to dart off her lap to join Brian under the bed. She couldn’t bring herself to tell even Aunt Maureen that she now wondered whether the ex-boyfriend she’d broken up with a couple months ago had started dating her in the first place because of the motel room proximity thing. She’d always refused to do it in the motel because knowing her grandmother had keys to every room and could walk in any moment with a cart of off-brand cleaning supplies wasn’t exactly sexy, but still. Instead, she said, “I mean, that’s not the only reason they suck. They don’t do anything or talk about anything. They’re just...” Stevie sighed, unsure of what she wanted to say.

“Listen, Stevie. Not to get all sentimental, which you know I don’t do, but you’re not like the dumbass kids we get around here, and that’s a good thing. You’re funny and smart and pretty—well, if not for that haircut.”

Stevie fingered the ends of her newly-short hair. “I _like_ my haircut.”

“See? Funny! You’re going to be fine.”

“But it’s not just the other kids. It’s this whole town. Nobody here thinks I’m funny. Nobody here gets me. Except you. And you’re leaving.” Stevie pulled back and looked at Aunt Maureen. “Don’t leave me here.”

There. She’d said it. She’d said it without sounding like she was kidding at all. And immediately, she knew it wasn’t going to make any difference. Stevie stared hard at the dirty carpet, her face hot, knowing that if she looked up, she’d start to cry.

After a few seconds, Aunt Maureen said, “Here, give me your palm.”

Aunt Maureen had gotten into the palm-reading stuff in the ‘60s, and Stevie was 72% sure it was bullshit, but she held out her hand anyway.

“See this?” Aunt Maureen pointed to the lower line sloping down between Stevie’s thumb and index finger. “That’s your life line. It’s deep. You’re going to have a lot of experiences in your life, Stevie. You’ve got a plenty of time to get out of Schitt’s Creek, if that’s what you really want. You’re smart, so you’ll go to college. You’ll meet new people. Try new things.” Stevie made a skeptical face, but Aunt Maureen sounded sure. “And if and when you do decide to leave, it should be because you’re running toward something, not running away. Get it?”

Stevie took a deep breath. “Got it.”

“Good.”

As if by unspoken assent, they resumed packing. They didn’t talk much more the rest of that day or the next, while they boxed and bagged up Maureen Budd’s life in Schitt’s Creek. Two days later, they flagged down Mutt Schitt and some of his friends to help them load all of Aunt Maureen’s stuff into a truck.

Stevie waved her off from the driveway, and then she walked home alone.


	3. Brendan, Toronto, 2006

**Brendan, Toronto, 2006**

Stevie sat in the shiny-yet-somehow-dusty lobby of an office building, sweating through her stiff, uncomfortable, but at least semi-professional-looking blazer, trying to remember not to rub her tired eyes and smear her mascara, and desperately wishing Brendan was there.

She had started to panic as soon as she’d arrived in Toronto the day before, and had never really stopped. When she’d visited the city for the first time last summer with Brendan, they’d both found it so exhilarating that they’d started to talk about moving there after graduation. At first it was just talk, but as their senior year went on, it dawned on Stevie that Brendan was being serious about it. And she liked Brendan. He was the _first_ guy she’d liked this much, actually—the first one she still wanted to be around all the time after the first couple months. She was in love with him, and for some reason he wanted to start his post-college life in this big, exciting city _with her._ So now here she was, in that city, waiting for her first-ever real job interview, and she suddenly found the scale of it all overwhelming.

Toronto was too big, too crowded. The sheets in the Best Western where she was staying were too crisp and, while she’d made a mental note to ask what products the hotel used for Nana Budd, she couldn’t sleep in them. She’d spent the night before staring at the blinking green light of the smoke detector on the ceiling and thinking, just like she did every time she skipped class to get high with Brendan, just like she did every time she missed an assignment deadline or her GPA dropped, _You’re going to fuck everything up_.

Getting out of Schitt’s Creek had been fairly easy, with her grades on the high end of her high school’s bell curve even when she didn’t put in much effort, pretty good test scores, and a season on the softball team to fill the need for an extracurricular activity. Stevie had spent the majority of the past four years at a college three hours away from her hometown, and the main thing she’d learned there was that _staying_ out of Schitt’s Creek was going to be harder. The town was like a drain—it sucked people back in.

Brendan had already lined up an unpaid internship, and his parents had agreed to foot the bill for his cost of living in Toronto while it lasted. That wasn’t an option for Stevie, which was why she was spending the first day of her spring break waiting to interview for the position of receptionist at a small advertising firm. She tried not to dwell on the fact that this was the one interview she’d managed to land and she had no backup plan. Instead, she scoped out the competition, two other women and one guy about her age. Unfortunately, it was immediately apparent to her that they were all way more qualified than she was. They looked so _put-together._ Their blazers fit right and probably even belonged to them, unlike Stevie’s, which was borrowed. She pulled herself out of her accustomed slouch in an attempt to look like she belonged there, but she knew even as she did it that it was probably a lost cause.

Absorbed in her own growing dread, she didn’t notice when Mr. McCall came into the lobby, and when he called her name, she jumped in her seat. She did remember to smile, though, when she shook his hand, and she responded to his remarks about the weather (“A lot of rain today, huh?”) in what she thought was an appropriate manner (“Yeah, a lot.”). Mr. McCall looked like a nice enough guy, with graying, receding hair and reading glasses on a chain around his neck. He guided her into a conference room and gestured for her to sit across from him at one end of an absurdly long table. Stevie sat.

“So, Stevie,” Mr. McCall began, shuffling the papers in front of him, one of which she recognized as her résumé, while her heart threatened to pound out of her chest, “tell me a little about yourself.”

“I come from a small town,” she said carefully. “I’m the first person in my family to go to college. I major in English. And, uh, I’m just really excited to get involved in the fast-paced and creative world of advertising.” She tried to make that last bit sound not sarcastic, but it wasn’t easy, and she didn’t think she’d really pulled it off. Mr. McCall didn’t seem insulted, though, so maybe she was better at faking sincerity than she’d thought.

“And I see you have some front desk experience. I’d love to hear more about the... uh...” He trailed off, then coughed. “...motel.” Stevie recognized the signs of someone who had just read the name “Schitt’s Creek” for the first time. Once again, she wished that her great-grandparents had thought to name the motel after anything but its location.

“Um, I’ve worked there basically my whole life, but formally starting when I was fifteen. It’s a family-run business.”

“Ah, I see. Did you ever want to branch out from there?”

“Uh... no.” Stevie suspected that was the wrong answer, so she quickly added, “But I also never got fired. Which my father did, three times, so that wasn’t actually a given.”

“And what are your responsibilities at the front desk?”

“I check people in, and... then I check them out.” Mr. McCall raised his eyebrows like he was expecting more, so Stevie scrambled to give it to him. “I give them keys. I answer the phone, um, take reservations... keep track of the reservations... Sometimes, if there’s no one else to do it, I clean rooms, but... that actually takes me away from the front desk, so... not relevant.” She pressed her lips together and felt sweat start to bead at her hairline. She imagined this was how the turkeys felt on the annual turkey shoot, and then really wished she hadn’t had that insight.

“I see you also work in your college library. Did you go through an application process for that position?”

“Yes.” That process had consisted of Brendan asking, “You wanna work here?,” her saying, “Yeah,” and him replying, “Cool.” She opted not to tell Mr. McCall that.

“And what are your responsibilities there?”

“Um. I check books _out_ , and then I check them _in_. So, kind of like the motel, but... backwards.” She forced a smile and a “heh” to show that was a joke. Mr. McCall did not laugh.

“Interesting way of looking at it,” he said, and wrote something on her résumé. “So, in this position, you’d be the first face people see coming in, and you’d be the first impression they get of the company. I assume that’s been the case for you in these other jobs as well?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And I assume that there, just like here, just like everywhere, the people you’ve dealt with can sometimes be rude, demanding, angry?”

“Yes.” Oh, God, had she agreed to that too quickly?

“So, I’d like to hear about a time you dealt with a difficult customer—patron, guest, whatever you want to call them—and how you handled that.”

“Oh. Oh, okay, um, well.” Somehow, Stevie’s mind was blank. Abstractly, she knew she’d seen some real human fiascos at the motel—people who screamed, threw things, trashed rooms—but none of the specifics would come clear. They were locked in some part of her brain that would only be accessible after about four more hours of sleep. The only thing she could think to say was, “A lot of times people want towels? Our towels at the motel seem to disappear a lot, I don’t really know… why that is. But, um, if someone calls the front desk, or comes to the front desk, asking for towels, I just… go in the back and get them a towel.”

A brief pause.

“Good. Okay. And how would you see that translating to this advertising agency?”

“Well, if someone came in wanting… something, like…” What did they want at places like this? Pencils? “…to speak to you, I would… go and get you.”

“Right... But unlike a towel, I’m sometimes in a meeting or otherwise occupied, so you would...?”

“Oh! Call.” Her hands flew up like she was playing charades, and she felt her face turn red. “Obviously, I would call you. Of course.”

Mr. McCall nodded in an encouraging way and started to ask another question, but Stevie could barely hear him over the sound of her heart hammering in her ears. _I can’t do this_. The thought was so simple and so obvious, and it dropped into her mind like a stone in a pond, the ripples spreading out— _no, no, no, nope_ —until she couldn’t think anything else. She couldn’t do this job, she couldn’t even do this interview. She’d been stupid to think she could. It was too much, it was too hard, she was too tired. She needed to get out.

Mr. McCall stopped talking, and Stevie had no idea what he had asked. She opened her mouth and then shut it again. Then she said, “Uh, actually, could I use your restroom really fast?”

He, understandably, looked puzzled. “Now?”

“Yes, please.”

“Oh, okay, I... I guess that’s fine. It’s around the corner to your left.”

Stevie darted from the conference room, around the corner, and through the door to the women’s room. Mercifully, it was empty. She turned on a faucet and was about to splash her face like they did on TV in panic situations until she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and remembered her makeup. She dabbed her wet hands on her neck instead. It made her feel even more stupid, but also somewhat better.

When she was breathing at something closer to a normal rate, Stevie leaned on the counter so that the edge of it pressed into the palms of her hands, and she stared at her pale, wide-eyed reflection in the mirror.

 _Fuck_ , she thought.

She shook her hands out and started pacing back and forth between the sinks and the stalls. She’d come here because this was her one shot. But being a receptionist would be like working the motel desk except with more people, and Stevie _hated_ people. What was she even _doing_ here? What was she _doing_ with her _life_? She’d refused to apply for any hospitality jobs, but it was now painfully clear that she wasn’t qualified for something even _one step harder_ than the motel, and now Brendan was going to know, _everybody_ was going to know how profoundly she’d failed. She grabbed a paper towel and noticed that her hands were shaking.

“Fuck!” she said.

What now? What was she supposed to do, now that she’d humiliated herself in front of her prospective employer? The only option was to go back in there, calm and collected, and knock this guy’s socks off with her professional, competent demeanor and the well-thought-out responses she should have come up with beforehand so that she could get this job she didn’t even want.

It was only a matter of time before someone came in to see if she had passed out or died or something. If she was going to emerge with some dignity intact, she would have to do it now. Stevie Budd took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and exited the women’s restroom.

But instead of turning back toward the conference room, she walked down the hallway, past the reception desk, past the people still waiting to interview, and out the glass doors. Without stopping or looking back, she walked back to the Best Western. She checked out, got in her car, and drove out of the city as fast as she could.

She drove until, halfway to Schitt’s Creek, she had to stop for gas. In the disgusting gas station bathroom, she washed off the tear-smudged remains of her makeup and changed into her jeans. The borrowed blazer was already crumpled in the car’s back seat. Logically, she knew that nobody from the advertising agency was in hot pursuit, but she took a small amount of comfort in the idea that, even if they were, they would never recognize her now.

After that, she sat behind the wheel in the tiny parking lot for a solid twenty minutes before flipping open her phone and finding Brendan’s name in her contacts. He was the one person she wanted to talk to, and he was the one person she least wanted to find out about what had just happened.

But he would understand, right? They’d been together a year. And if he was in this enough to want to move to a new city together, to move _in_ together, then he was in it enough to wait for her—do long-distance or whatever, even though they’d agreed that would suck—while she figured things out. Right? All she needed was some time. All she wanted was to hear him say he understood and he was with her and everything would be all right.

On the second ring, Brendan answered, “Back in the shithole already?” and in spite of everything, Stevie almost smiled.

“Not quite,” she said. Brendan had visited her in Schitt’s Creek once; he’d insisted on having his picture taken in front of the town sign and he’d smirked and snarked his way through what little else the town had to offer, from the town hall to the cafe to the motel. Stevie would’ve been a lot more embarrassed if it hadn’t been so funny.

“How was the interview?”

“Mm. Not great.”

“The guy was an asshole, huh?”

“Kind of.” Stevie winced a little at the lie.

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.” Stevie pulled her feet up onto the seat, so that her knees were pressed up against the steering wheel, and tried to sound nonchalant, dismissive. “I didn’t really want that job anyway. It was just... I just don’t think I want to be a receptionist, you know?”

“I get that,” Brendan said. “So now what?”

“I don’t know.” At least that was true. The thought of sitting through another interview like that ever again seemed impossible, but what other options were there? Stevie squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to say, “Um, I... I’ve been thinking, actually, that my grandmother probably needs me around the motel. For a while.”

“You’re not going to keep looking?” Brendan didn’t sound hurt, exactly, just confused.

“No, I am, it’s just... I don’t think... there’s anything out there for me. Right now.”

Three seconds passed before Brendan said, “But we agreed we didn’t want to do long-distance.”

“Yeah, no, I know, it’s just...” Stevie ran a hand through her hair and searched for a way to not sound pathetic. “Nana Budd has arthritis, and so I can’t just _leave_ now, you know? So...”

There was a longer pause this time.

“Okay... well... can we stay together until graduation, anyway?”

At first, Stevie was sure she’d misunderstood. She’d been driving for ages through fits of crying on maybe three hours of sleep. Her brain wasn’t processing Brendan’s words right. “What?”

“I mean, it seems pointless to break up before graduation, it’s not like we’re going to meet anybody else. We can just... enjoy these last couple months, or whatever. If that’s cool with you.”

Stevie felt like she’d been dunked out of nowhere into freezing water, all the air shocked out of her lungs. When she caught her breath, she choked out, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that... makes sense.”

Because it did. Because what else was she supposed to say? They _had_ agreed they didn’t want to do long distance. And now, even if she explained what she’d meant, she’d always know that he’d already accepted their breakup in the space of seconds, like it was nothing. He didn’t even sound _upset_. If she told him she couldn’t come to Toronto because she’d blown up the interview? He’d see her for the disaster she was and break up with her anyway. Probably. She’d rather _not_ know that part for sure. At least this way, she wasn’t some _victim_. At least this way, she didn’t have to defend herself.

“Cool,” Brendan said. “To be honest, I’m kind of relieved.”

Stevie shook her head, feeling disoriented. “You are?”

“Yeah, I was getting worried about being tied down once we go to the city. Like, especially if we weren’t going to be long-term compatible. But now we can both just start fresh. Nobody has to get hurt.”

She swallowed hard. “Yeah. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.” She chuckled ruefully at herself. “And like, what would you do, come to Schitt’s Creek every weekend?”

“Right?” Brendan laughed, too. “God, that would suck.”

“Yeah. So, but—will you be able to find another roommate?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. That won’t be a problem. I was actually talking to Andy about that the other day.”

“Oh,” she said. “Great. That’s great, that you were already talking to him.” The other day. Before all this, before she’d messed everything up.

“Yeah, we could do like a bachelor pad thing.”

“ _Bachelor_ pad, wow.” For a second, she wondered if she was going to throw up, and a tiny sob broke through.

“Are you okay?” Brendan asked.

Stevie sniffed and swiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “Yeah, I’m just—I can’t believe I’m having this serious conversation on the phone at a gas station.”

“Yeah, it’s weird.” A pause. A man walking through the parking lot looked at her curiously, and she glared at him until he turned away. “So... uh... thanks for being so cool, Stevie. And I guess I’ll see you back at school.”

“Yeah. See you.” She started to say, “I love you,” but at the last second, managed to turn it into, “I—later. Bye.”

By the time she got back to Schitt’s Creek, it felt like about a million hours had passed since the job interview. Somehow, though, it was still late afternoon, so Stevie went straight to the motel.

Nana Budd greeted her granddaughter with a hug, which Stevie let it last a little longer than she might have usually, and asked how the interview had gone.

“Fine,” she replied, as convincingly as she could, and because Nana Budd could never quite read her, she bought it.

Nana Budd was a people person—always up on the local gossip. As Stevie slid heavily into the chair behind the front desk, jittery from the caffeine that had kept her awake all the way home in a way that gave everything a slight air of unreality, she heard about how another one of her high school ex-boyfriends was getting married and how the only other girl in her class who had ventured out beyond Elmdale Community College already had a post-graduation job lined up in Elmington.

“You take over the desk,” Nana said finally. “I’ll go change the sheets in Room 4.”

“Oh, I should do the sheets,” Stevie said, because Nana Budd really _did_ have arthritis, and when she did things like this, it made Stevie feel guilty for ever wanting to leave at all.

“Don’t be silly. You’ve had a long drive. You should sit.”

“I’ve _been_ sitting,” Stevie grumbled, but Nana Budd was already halfway out the door, so she slumped down in her chair and contemplated the front office—the dingy carpet, the furniture that was at least a decade older than she was, the toxic coffee maker, the giant stag painting on the wall behind her. The time away allowed her to really _see_ it in a way she hadn’t in a long while. She’d been hanging around here since before she could remember, and in all that time, not a single thing had changed. Only she’d gotten older, and one by one, all the other people who had sat at this desk had gone.

She’d go, too, someday. Maybe.

The phone rang. Stevie picked it up.

“Motel, Stevie speaking. Yes, I can book you for July.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to the people who voted in my "What was Stevie's college major?" poll on Twitter and to the writers of Schitt's Creek who, after I had already drafted this chapter, made it canon that Stevie's response to a stressful work situation would be to have a "what am I doing with my life?" breakdown and straight-up flee the scene.


End file.
